


live by love through the stars

by thatgirlwho



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Fated Lovers, M/M, Reincarnation, kind of like red string of fate but not really?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-29
Updated: 2016-12-29
Packaged: 2018-09-13 05:33:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9108661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatgirlwho/pseuds/thatgirlwho
Summary: They find each other beneath a tree, branches bending with its fruit. One reaches up, plucks the ripe fruit from a stem and cracks it open on a rock, jewel-like red seeds and sweet juices falling into his open palms.He offers it to his friend with a smile.--Eggsy and Harry find each other every time, through multiple lives and thousands of years.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For anon, who requested reincarnation AU for a prompt. I instantly thought of stars and multiple lifetimes. 
> 
> I cried a bit writing this, ok. I’ve got a lot of feelings. Also, I’ve been reading _The Song of Achilles_. So, there’s that. Title from e.e. cummings.

They do not get to choose. It has been decided, far before the first time they will ever meet.

It is written in the stars, they will say. A grand canopy of points of far-off light that weaves them together, reaching for the other through the darkness. That they will find each other—fated to be ever intertwined.

But they do not get to choose.

It is not that easy, or that kind.

–

The first time they meet, their people are young, their journey having just started, building the foundations of life in the rocky soil they have stumbled towards.

They are too, the two of them, skin pink with youth, eyes wild with promise.

It will not always be this way. The stars were gentle, this time.

It is summer and they live near the sea. In many lifetimes, they will come back to it. It is where they began.

They find each other beneath a tree, branches bending with its fruit. One reaches up, plucks the ripe fruit from a stem and cracks it open on a rock, jewel-like red seeds and sweet juices falling into his open palms.

He offers it to his friend with a smile.

His eyes are as fierce and beautiful as the sea that crashes upon the rocks, shifting between a vivid green and darkened blue. Water beneath the rising and falling of the sun.

The world is endless and so are they.

–

They do not always get to grow old together.

The times they do, they do not know how fortunate they are, truly. Most of the time, they do not remember before. Only a familiarness, something innate that swells up within them, a longing that, even half a world away, connects them.

In the lifetimes they do meet, there is a quiet recognition. _I have known you._

In the times they do grow old, it is not so simple. It is in secluded meetings, whispered conversations, letters heavy with unspoken devotion. They are always hiding behind their words.

They sit as old men together. They stand ever nearer with each passing life and galaxies expand between them. They sit and they do not say. But, oh, do they love and they do not understand.

They do not choose. They would never choose different if given the chance.

They are old men, and the one with eyes like oceans during a storm will be alone.

_Say you will see me again. I cannot bear it._

The other reaches out. The touch timid, the grasp of his fingers cold. He is leaving.

_I will always find you._

The stars are vast and unending. They are not concerned with the constraints of time, of lives born and dying beneath their flickering light. They have no burden of mortality.

But they say, you will find him again.

The stars are fickle, their promises true but with no direction.

There is not enough time in the world, in all the universe, for them to love enough.

They will find each other again.

–

They learn a thousand languages. They speak in hundreds of tongues. They live through bloody wars and leaps of mankind and lifetimes of staggering simplicity, never knowing of agony or despair or grief.

Not knowing of love. Their love, in any way.

Sometimes, they do not even meet.

They do not always get a chance to say it.

But they know it. Written in the stars. In their skin.

They come back to the sea and it is wide and cruel and loud with promise.

–

He stands upon a shore. There are thousands of them, men in formation, waiting. The sand beneath his feet is unbearably hot. He thinks he will burn beneath the sun, turn to stone.

They are marching to their deaths. The sword is heavy in his hands and his heart beats like war drums in his chest.

War drums.

A cry of anticipation, of victory, rises in the crowd. He looks up, squints into the splendid midday sun and _there he is._

Their glorious leader.

Just _his._

In him, something awakens. That knowing that sparks flames within him, that he will follow him wherever he may lead. Every time, every life. He knows him, like birds know to spread their wings to the gusts of wind, like the trees know to bend to the sun, like the sea knows to come back, keep coming back.

They will keep coming back.

His own voice joins the chant, his cries raw against his throat, his smile wide, sword crashing against his shield. He will march into glory.

He will die never knowing him, not this time, only a glimpse of him as he walked through the crowds.

–

There are times they never meet.

Centuries will pass where the other is kept amongst the universe to rest and one will wander upon the earth alone. Always searching. Feeling as if they are missing something but never knowing what.

It comes and goes. They do not choose who stays or is born again.

One dies as the other is born, merely passing as souls through the heavens. Next time, the stars promise.

They live hundreds of thousand of miles apart. There a few times that they do find each other, even then. Sailing vast, uncharted oceans, walking barren land with bloodied feet, never stopping until that aching, gnawing need to be closer, to go farther than ever possible, stops.

They find each other continents apart.

They spend multiple lifetimes loving others and it’s never enough.

The stars are not cruel because they choose it. They have no concept of morality, of kindness. They have done as they always have: write their stories, send them away and bring them home. They say, you will see them again.

They just don’t realize how short even hundreds of lifetimes can be.

–

They have names for it, now. Words to put to it.

They must not. They cannot. It is sinful, it is wrong. They shouldn’t, they shouldn’t, but they do.

It’s what they were made for. To love recklessly, with abandon, with a heart so full of it they can think of nothing else.

They kiss behind closed doors, fraught with uncertainty and all-consuming want. They wrap themselves in each other because they’ve been here before.

The first time, the first time is a revelation. The stars have been waiting for this for eons. For them to touch like this, to know each other’s heart beating beneath their open hand, to fall into the warmth and the comfort that they made from cosmic dust.

They kiss like they never will again. They think they won’t. It may be ages before they do again.

They are mostly right.

–

Sometimes, they remember. Nothing in particular, nothing truly tangible, just a sense of it.

_It’s your eyes. I’ve seen them before._

The other laughs. _You probably have. It’s a common colour._

_No. Something behind them. Something in you._

They reach for each other, asking _trust me_ without ever knowing. First meetings. Trust me, please. They always do.

_I know you._

–

What a love. It follows them throughout. It brings them violent sorrow and infinite joy.

There are times they love so much, they do not know what to do with it. They love so much that they hate.

There is a time that one watches the other die. There are too many times. Once, where the one with eyes like the earth beneath their feet when they ate pomegranates under a tree lifetimes ago, kills the other. His hands red, like the bright juices of ripe fruit broken upon a stone.

He is bereft, sick and trembling, and does not know why. He did not know him in that lifetime.

They love enough to destroy worlds. They love enough to walk the earth to find it. They love enough to know nothing else, to always be left wanting for it without even knowing. They love enough to find each other. They love enough to recognize each other, after hundreds of births and deaths. They do not forget. The parts of them made from the universe itself do not forget.

It’s in the eyes.

–

It is not often that one returns from the dead. Usually, the stars take them back home amongst the new-born stars and clouds of brilliant gas and dust, luminous against the vast dark.

This time.

Well, even they know it was not meant to end this way.

They send him back. Just this once, they say.

The sorrow of the one left behind dims out all the stars, just for a moment.

It could last a lifetime.

–

Eggsy lays in the sand, digging his fingers into it. They are naked and he is laughing and his chest aches from the cold. But he is happy.

He turns his head to look at Harry, his face illuminated by the canopy of stars and the bright, white moon.

He thinks how lucky he is, how fortunate he is. That the love that consumes him is given back. How lucky he is.

Eggsy reaches out, finds Harry’s hand at his side, laces them together. He stares up at the stars.

_Amazing, innit?_

_What is?_

_That of all the times we could have been alive, we’re alive at the same time. That of all the places I could have been born, or you could have been born, we was born here._

Harry doesn’t believe in fate. Not really, no. Something brought him back. He doesn’t say what. It flickers within him, an ancient knowledge.

He looks at Eggsy and he loves so profoundly, he finds it hard to breath sometimes.

Like waves upon a rocky shore. At the beginning of the world.

A boy under a tree, hands open. Oh, how he’s loved and loved and loved. It could outlive the stars.

_Like we was always meant for each other._


End file.
